The invention provides an information system to be used in the construction of new homes. The system is designed to be used by builders that reuse house plans or product information in the new homes they build. Three distinct steps in the process are used as the basis for the information model: product development, procurement and order fulfillment. A xe2x80x9cCore Housexe2x80x9d(trademark) concept is employed, so that wherever an option is available all possible choices are uniquely defined. The software is divided into three modules based upon three distinct dialects that must be related and communicated efficiently. The first dialect involves marketing, design and sales price. The second dialect involves procurement, contracting and job cost. The last dialect involves production or construction precedence order.
The new invention provides and supports state-of-the-art software products and services for the homebuilding industry to manage and maintain all operating information in a single, comprehensive database. The unique approach relies on the concept of building a xe2x80x9cCore Housexe2x80x9d with options versus the traditional concept of a base house with options.
Also, the new products and services use semantic database tools superior to the relational or object oriented database management system technology employed by other software providers to the industry. As a result, information is not maintained in tables, which typically cause relational or object oriented models to become inefficient before reaching the finest levels of detailed information required to build a new home.
The information is kept in one database. These features allow for maintenance of the system over time in one database without redundancy, avoiding system data overload and avoiding causes of system failure.
The new products define operating information to be used and reused in the following conditions:
as unique views of the company, project, and lot/new home;
as a collection of decisions made during the product development, procurement and order fulfillment processes, which allows the information to be shared by the new homebuilder""s staff and communicated to numerous third parties including customers and subcontractors; and
as a basis for making informed decisions and planning future strategies.
To provide builders with a comprehensive management system from the new home sales function to the delivery of a finished product to the customer, the invention provides modules. They are the option modulexe2x80x94used at on-site sales offices, facilitating the automated selection of defined builder options, creating a completed house design with pricing, the procurement/contracting modulexe2x80x94used to maintain all quotes and contract information on subcontractors responsible for constructing the new home, and the production/scheduling modulexe2x80x94used to manage the activities of all subcontractors, to ensure timely and efficient meeting of construction deadlines and the approval of all work as completed by subcontractors for payment.
These modules may be used independently to manage a builder""s operations, or be linked with existing systems. In all cases, the information generated from these modules may be linked directly with builders"" office applications, accounting systems and/or CAD systems. As a comprehensive set of management tools, the invention contributes directly to users"" fiscal management and strategic planning initiatives. Additional modules are available.
Existing software products in the new home building industry have been developed using the existing concept of xe2x80x9cbase house with optionsxe2x80x9d, which refers to the most basic or least expensive home that can be built as a starting point, while adding more expensive options to arrive at the desired house. However, from an information management point of view, the portion of the base house that must be removed to add a more expensive option is not defined.
The new software product relies on the new concept of xe2x80x9cCore Housexe2x80x9d. This concept creates a hole at each location that an option is possible, requiring an option choice to be made to fill the hole. Each option choice triggers additional decisions unique to that option choice. The semantic database management structure used as the foundation of the new software products allows the option decision tree to be maintained in one comprehensive management system, and at a much more detailed level than customary relational or object oriented database structures, due to the numerous relationships inherent in the process.
Existing software products are organized to respond to simple yes and no questions. The new software accommodates three other kinds of decisions that typically arise in managing new home information. They are:
when there is more than one choice, but only one can be chosen (e.g. one of three front elevations must be chosen);
when a choice is directly dependent on the previous choice (e.g. the finish material to be used on the elevation chosen is to be siding or brick); and
when a choice is indirectly dependent on the previous choice due to the complexity of defining a three-dimensional architectural object (e.g. a plan choice affects a front elevation choice).
These and further and other objects and features of the invention are apparent in the disclosure, which includes the above and ongoing written specification, with the drawings.